Portfolio 11 - Legacy Luncheon

Article from August 15, 2009

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/legacy-luncheon-a-great-tradition-1.1816043

Legacy Luncheon a Great Tradition

Parents and students connect for a family tradition.

Jake Goldbas

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Published: Saturday, August 15, 2009

Updated: Saturday, August 15, 2009

It wasn’t just another luncheon on move-in day. It was a chance for alumni who have children attending the University to take a break from move-in day and celebrate a family tradition of attending State.

The luncheon is “a nice thing that they do, and it’s a nice break from moving in,” Terri Howell, a 1987 graduate in business management, said.

Howell, her husband Bryan and their son, incoming freshman Hampton, who will major in chemical and biomedical engineering said the luncheon is reassuring to parents and that the deans and administrators who attended showed that they cared and respected the transition process.

Lennie Barton, associate vice chancellor for alumni relations, said he sat at the Legacy Luncheon four years ago with his son. He said the Wolfpack family is so proud of its 175,000 living alumni and that the school is especially supportive of the alumni.

“This is one of the best things our association does,” Barton said.

Adam Compton, last year’s senior class president and Students Today Alumni Tomorrow leader, encouraged students to be active, to go to class and to find their roles at school.

“Remember why you are here,” he said to the incoming students and their parents at the luncheon with more than 600 people attending. “And do not hesitate to ask for help.”

Chancellor James Woodward spoke specifically to the parents when he said, “We will not let you down.”

He said students had made the right choice and emphasized that students should go out and make new friends because these friends that they meet in the next week could be lifetime friends. Woodward said this is certainly one of the most exciting times in incoming students’ lives and that students should not be too shy to go to people who are sitting by themselves and invite them into the Wolfpack family.

Woodward played a game where people stood up to show how many family members they had who went to school. Students who had at least two stood up, and then sat down if they did not have three and so on. The winner was James Davis, who had 14 relatives. William Jones came in close second with 13 relatives.

Tyler Corbitt, an incoming freshman in engineering whose grandfather graduated in 1976, said the luncheon was a fun event and the food was great. Tyler’s father Chris, who graduated in 1976 with a degree in geology, said is a wonderful tradition to bring back alumni and he and his son share something special. His other son Matthew will attend UNC-Chapel Hill in the fall.

Daniel Pickard of Hillsborough did not encourage his daughter to pick State specifically, but was nevertheless delighted that his daughter picked the school without his persuasion.

“It has grown. I’m very happy.” Pickhard said he was happy to see that the school has changed with the times for the better. Pickard graduated in 1973 with a degree in textiles and works for Duke University.

Insults? Facades!

Well, we've had our first redesign thanks to my sister. I hope anyone reading this will like it very much. I personally think that this makes it significantly easier to read.

Jim, Nicole, Matt, and Paige, thank you guys for reading. Anyone else who is reading, thank you, too.

Argument: Insults are not real


Premise 1: If someone says something about you, it either applies or it doesn't
Premise 2: If it does not apply, then it is not an insult
Premise 3: Insults never apply
Conclusion 1: Insults are not real

Illustration: If someone calls a person, 'An orangutan' then that person is either an orangutan or not an orangutang; it either applies or it does not. No one is ever an orangutan, so it does not apply.

On a parallel example, if someone calls a person 'a popsicle' this is not an insult because it does not have any relation to reality.

On a third and conclusive example, if someone calls another person stupid, that person is either stupid or not stupid.

The situation would seem that if the person is stupid, then the other person has given them factual help for their lives. Considering how helpful facts are, this is actually a positive denotation, and not a negative one at all.

Consider helpful information, as in the classic white lie example. A white lie is a lie that people tell in order to smooth things over. A white lie is a lie with good intentions. All lies have good intentions behind them, but we will discuss that later. There is a better definition for white lies that we will work out later.

The point is that there is a relation between what we say, as in what is said, denoted, written, signaled; and what it relates to, is, exists as, and signified (signified, is that right?).

This proof is of course cold and callus. There is going to be a sister entry about why insults do exist and where this proof goes wrong. Meanwhile, read up on your Zeno's paradoxes, and be able to explain why they are important.

Isn't all that philosophy a lot of bull shit?

I kept getting this one a while ago. In fact, my friend Robert and I were talking. I said that I understand why all of this stuff is important, I just don't understand it. Robert said that he feels the opposite way. (By the way, why do we say that something that is reciprocal is opposite? reciprocal, as far as I understand, has to do with flipping the fractions; but these are not opposites in at least a couple of ways. For example, should not the opposite of a fraction be a whole?).

Recap:

Jake: I understand why all of these inquiries and reasons are important, but I do not understand them in general.

Robert: I understand these inquiries in general, but I do not understand why they are important.

This has to do with the baby logic we have been doing for the past few entries. Robert and I have conflicting ideas about where and when analytic, empirical, concrete knowledge should be employed. But both of our standpoints are positive and very much ambiguous. His is more about how critical thinking happens after quantitative analysis; living in the house versus building the house. Of course he dabbles in both. Robert is a consummate logician, he has mastered the few mathematical logic courses (a mere 2, plus a third sister course in the Philosophy of Language). He understands the material where I do not. But where is its access to a greater truth.

Now, I have said my position several places on this blog before. Namely, that you cannot remove the ethical implications of building the house from the ethical implications of living in the house. There is a teleological or design-based method employed in the creation of the house. The people who built the house knew that the ethical implication of living there was that the people's lives who live there will be better.

Colin Powell is an excellent illustration of such a teleological motive. He did not want an unethical war, so he resigned under President George W. Bush.

"Beautiful Liar!" Is an Okay Beyonce-Shakira song

But I'm not so sure about the "guilty pleasure" saying that some of my friends say.

I had a lot of time the other day to think about it, and I think there are various stances and reasons for why I am against it.

First, this seems like a cognitive-consonance managing statement. I'm concerned with the "just one" mentality because of the fact that large-scale problems can often be rooted in small scale, repeated negative habits. From anecdotal experience, people accept this, what we call a slippery slope, camel's nose argument, or a wedge argument.

The argument generally reads that if you accept one instance of the problem, you might accept more instances of the problem later on.

It's called a slippery slope argument because of the comparison of a person on top of a hill who takes a step on something slippery will slide down that hill. This reveals something, however, that if we "nip it in the bud" while it is small, we can do it while it is still in control. Those familiar with the Petite Prince will know the baobab reference: that the prince had to take care of the baobabs when they were small seeds, or they would ruin his home by becoming big trees.

My point here is to explain slippery slope, but also point out that there is a lack of volition; or an increase in the resignation against a problem because it seems insurmountable.

It's called a wedge argument when we phrase the problem as increasing incrementally over time, as if going from something smaller and smaller toward something larger and larger. Lastly, the camel's nose is a phrase that says if you let the camel have a smell of the tent, there will be nothing to stop the whole camel from coming in.

The point is that guilty pleasures are just the type of thing to be wedge argued, so to speak. Because they are being denoted by being scoffed at, read: dismissed as a guilty pleasure, they are small things that could lead to big trouble.

A survey of guilty pleasures leads us to a similar conclusion: cigarettes, fatty foods, drug use, and so on. These are good as small amounts, but terrible in large amounts. I disagree that moderation is the key, here. Saying that moderation is the key is an oversimplification of the problem. One time when we were talking about a local drunkard, I told my friend Joe that some people just need to hit rock bottom. Joe said, "Yeah Jake, and for some people, rock bottom is dying." Of course too much alcohol will kill you; but that's because it is too much. We have misplaced our focus from the problem if we have to assume the scenario of dying.

Likewise, from an ethical standpoint: some things can be good, bad, or neutral. A certain song may be pleasant to the music-lover, unpleasant to the music-hater, and neutral to the deaf person.

The next point is that the term "guilty pleasure" is a mismatch in the first place. Gilbert Ryle, in his Concept of Mind argued that pleasure is not the opposite of pain. They are on different scales, and should be taken that way. Somewhere along the way this leads us to the conclusion that guilty is an ethical standpoint, whereas pleasure is perhaps above or separate from ethics. Certain actions that are ethically neutral, have little ethical significance, or just do not factor into contemporary ethics (so far as we know) in the same way that other issues do are called supererogatory.

Guilt is an ethical standard. Pleasure is a supererogatory standard. For for illustrative examples, murder is ethically wrong, pleasure is something we get from eating chocolates.

In our language, guilt also has a connotative meaning that it is an imperative (and here I must say I am speaking from my collected experience, I can't cite a source). Imperatives are the should part of our language. In explaining them to us in French class, we were taught that they are the part of the language that says "Study!" or "Etudier!"

When I say that guilt has connotation of an imperative, you might know what I mean from your own experience. Whenever someone is guilty, they are supposed to repay the crime. This is from both Utilitarian and Retributivist standpoints.

Pleasure implies something else.